Green Party Pres. candidate Cynthia Mckinney national speaking tour

EYEWITNESS LIBYA: CYNTHIA MCKINNEY REPORTS BACK ON THE MASSIVE BOMBIMG OF TRIPOLI
-Mckinney to speak in Los Angeles on Saturday June 18th!!

-Cynthia Mckinney was the 2008 Green Party Presidential candidate along with Vice Presidential Candidate Rosa Clemente.

The ANSWER Coalition is sponsoring a nationwide speaking tour featuring former Congressional representative and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, who is currently in Libya on her second fact-finding mission. McKinney will offer an eyewitness report exposing the truth that has been concealed by the western corporate media.

Also speaking on the tour will be Akbar Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Brian Becker, National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition.

McKinney and the other speakers will shed light on the devastating impact of the U.S./NATO bombing of Libya and the extensive civilian casualties that the White House, Pentagon and the media have persistently denied. McKinney is currently on her second trip to Libya during the NATO bombing. During her time there, she has visited several hospitals, and has conducted video interviews with doctors and the wounded.

Under the guise of humanitarian intervention and protecting civilians, NATO has carried out a massive bombing of Africa’s largest oil producer. McKinney’s report shows how devastating the bombing has been for civilians in Tripoli and elsewhere.

This is exactly why I don’t want to see her representing the Green Party. There are reasoned, reality based arguments for why NATO involvement in Libya is unwise but to suggest that we are there for “O.I.L” is completely divorced from reality. Libya was exporting to major NATO nations like France, Italy and Germany before the rebel uprising, so its unclear why they would be motivated to take the oil they were already getting, and her claim that the Libyan rebels are colluding with Israel is 100% evidence free.

Its ridiculous stuff like supporting dictators and concocting conspiracy theories that will doom the Green Party to national obscurity and electoral failure. I sincerely hope the Green Party will move past Congresswomen McKinney.

Ben, who did you vote for in 2008? Just curious. I was tempted to vote Nader but ended up voting for Cynthia (Green Party).

Sometimes Cynthia says thing that make me cringe, but so does Nader, and Paul. What I find is, people who are willing to take on the status-quo don’t always agree with each other 100%, nor are they perfect (i.e. 100% correct).

Her comments on NATO use of DU is a valid thing to bring up. The bombing of civilian targets and her comments about the Pro-Israel lobby’s influence over American politics are also very relevant.

I do see the “political liability” of looking like you are supporting a dictator, but that same argument was made when WE protested the Iraq War. I don’t like Qaddafi, but I do understand he was pushing the African Union to use the Dinar/Dirham (Gold and Silver) as currency, and now the rebels are setting up a central bank. At the same time Qaddafi is a complete psychopath.

I’m actually a supporter of a single-federated-state solution, but really, I support whatever builds peace in the region (as in, whatever ends the fighting). I think a Israel-Palestine state, with Jerusalem as the capital, and a federated-constitution (basically creating “Jewish” and “Muslim” states within the union) could help defuse the rhetoric on both sides. Fights will happen at the polls rather than the borders. And no, I don’t think it’ll be all flowers and butterflies, there’d be protests to election results and a lot of finger pointing, but eventually I think a “Union Party” would emerge that would attempt to move past religious divisions. The Golan Heights could be given the choice to stay or rejoin Syria (yes, I know Syria is mad-crazy right now, but this would help defuse Syria’s rhetoric again Israel, and if Golan rejoined, it’d bring in a “western-educated” population into Syria’s electorate/population).

Right now, I just don’t think we should be worrying about how we “look” to the mainstream. I think we need to build momentum and challenge the issues. Does that mean Laura Wells is perfect, no, but she got my vote for Governor. Does that mean that Kent Mesplay is perfect, no, but he has my support to move forward. Does that mean any of us are perfect…nope. Not at all. But we are moving forward. We have ideas, we are challenging the status-quo, and trying to figure out how to solve the problems the world faces. We can’t do it alone, no one can, because no one is perfect. We find a platform by working together.

Dennis Kucinich is not always right, but I’m glad he is in Congress. I don’t agree 100% with Ron Paul, but he has my vote for President. This is how we move forward, but putting aside our ego and realizing we will never have our personal ideals represented 100% by anyone. Because neither of us agree 100% with each other, but working alone won’t get us anywhere.

I have a very different political philosophy then you, Jack. I feel like it is essential that the Greens begin to consider how “we ‘look’ to the mainstream”. Indeed, the only way we are ever going to start winning elections is by presenting a coherent, attractive message to America. Politics is the art of the possible, but instead of constructing a clear vision for America by focusing on issues that are both relevant to voters and reasonably attainable (reducing the size of the military, improving our education system, Medicare for all etc.) too many Green politicians have elected to drag our image down with bizarre and counter productive conspiracy theories that both alienate most voters and usually have little basis in reality.

Further more I both find it both politically unwise and sincerely troubling that McKinney thought it would be a good idea to associate herself with someone from the Nation of Islam, an openly racist and anti-Semitic organization.

@KD if I saw it reported by any credible source I would begin to believe it, so far McKinney just seems to be reporting internet rumors as fact.

@Ben – I totally agree with you. In order to get to that coherent platform and message we need to allow some freedom in peripheral positions. In order for the Greens to get to the point where they have enough support to get elected they need to bring in as many people as possible as long as they are in agreement to that simple coherent platform that you are talking about.

If you feel like your views are not being represented then its time for you to become a leader. If you are not already, attend your local Green Party meetings, take on responsibilities with the Green Party, start a blog and begin writing, and even run for a local office if you have the time. Organize meet-ups in your area, begin attending your City Council meetings, etc.

Unfortunately Ben, it looks like you’ve been confused by White House talking points. Revealing US war crimes in Libya and opposing Obama’s latest illegal war does not mean “supporting dictators and concocting conspiracy theories”. Everything that Cynthia McKinney has said after seeing Libya firsthand is factual. I wake up each day feeling very thankful that I voted Cynthia McKinney for president in 2008 and not Neocon Barack Obama.

Also, define “mainstream”. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 11% of US adults support communism. Other polls have found support for socialism between 20-40% of the US population. So again, what is “mainstream”? I certainly hope your vision of mainstream is not imitating the Democrats who are all totally controlled by Wall Street and the super-rich oligarchs that rule the USA.

US workers are more left-wing (when it comes to economic/foreign policies) than the corporate press would ever dare to recognize. The Green Party just needs to do a better job organizing them. Perhaps tone done the environment/culture war issues a bit and focus more on the working class. On the other hand, if the Green Party becomes neo-liberal and pro-imperialist, it will have no reason to continuing existing. US millionaires/billionaires already have the Dems/GOP — they do not need a third party.

I have to jump in here and chime in something. It doesn’t matter how we try to wag the dog in terms of our ‘image’ as Greens. We are always going to be seen by the MSM as nutjob wackos, no matter what we do. But so what? That doesn’t mean we should stop fighting for the causes we believe in. It doesn’t mean we should keep quiet about our perspective. We can’t win the game being played right now, it’s specifically designed to prevent us from even playing. Having a coherent message doesn’t matter because it won’t get covered anyway. Giving ourselves a PR polish so that the press will somehow decide to pay attention to us? A waste of time and energy because we’d have to dilute and warp our views so much that they’d become unrecognizable. It’s because we believe in the things we do that we aren’t covered or considered ‘important’. The way forward is to stop buying in to that fiction. Keep our heads down, make progress where we can. Forget the national level. Concentrate on the local. Be examples and put our money where our mouths are. That’s how we’re going to attract new membership, by having the courage of our convictions, taking actions that reflect our beliefs. Others will see it and think, “ya know, that’s what I believe, too; maybe I should jump on board with these folks.”

I totally get where Ben is coming from. When I was 19 I started working with the Green Party of Sonoma County to decriminalize marijuana through a ballot initiative (which got me sued by the county for putting it at risk of conflicting with federal law). At the time I was very much in Ben’s mentality. That we needed to be careful and refine a candidate or platform that’d attract the mainstream.

Since then I’ve become less worried with that, and more interested in organizing the people who are able to see through any “craziness” that might come from the Green ranks.

As in most endeavors, it is more productive to work and build with those that are already an your side than it is to try to convince others to join you.

“In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.” – Jesse Jackson

Leaving aside the debate over how the Green Party should present its self strategically, I have a Problem with Congresswoman McKinney not just because her statements counterproductive politically, but also because they are just objectively pretty nutty. Like I said, there are legitimate arguments to be made for why our attack on Libya is a bad idea and it seems pretty clear that Barack Obama has yet again abused his executive powers. Regardless of how you feel about NATO’s intervention, the Libyan uprising against Gadhafi is a wonderful instance of an oppressed people fighting for their freedom. So to suggest that the rebels are somehow part of a Zionist conspiracy and appearing sympathetic to a monster like Gadhafi is simply a bizarre, off-putting thing to do.

This isn’t even the only time she has supported a dictator. Just a few months ago she defended Côte d’Ivoire’s strong man Laurent Gbagbo for some incoherent reason involving Henry Kissinger. Not only is she a bad representative for the Green Party, I genuinely believe she would also make a bad president.

I reject the idea that by abandoning baseless conspiracy theories, the Greens are somehow exactly like the Republicans and Democrats. I want a party that will really fight for clean air and water, Medicare for all and global peace and I sincerely believe that if enough people put in their blood, sweat and tears we could see some electoral success, but if we waste our time with 9/11 trutherism, black radicals and Zionist conspiracies I can guaranty you the Green party will languish in obscurity.

@Ben – Look into Kent Mesplay’s campaign, so far he is the only declared candidate for the Green Party Nomination for President. He could use your help building his campaign. I think you’d like him a lot more the Cynthia.

Imagine how much you could have get done by writing Kent a letter and beginning to contact the State Green Parties looking for others to work with on his campaign. Would take as much effort as it did debating Cynthia’s comments and positions on here. Keep moving forward, I’m glad you are involved, you’ve got passion and a great point of view.

There are enough people for you to work with that TOTALLY AGREE with you, that you won’t have time to even think about getting in debates online over differences. Keep moving forward my friend, you are on the right track. Consume yourself with building, debate only takes you away from that (leave debates to candidates if they are actually able to get into the debates).

Ben, Libya’s rebels are just a combination of monarchists and Islamists who want to take the country back into the dark ages while creating a pro-US puppet regime. US imperialism would not be supporting them if they were independent from the West or left-wing. Furthermore, just because someone is protesting does not make them progressive (e.g. the Tea Party movement in the US). Libya’s current government is secular and has provided its people with the highest standard of living of any country in Africa along with numerous social programs. The neo-liberal, pro-US rebels want to take all of that wealth away from the Libyan people and hand it over to Western corporations.

Could you cite some examples of the words of Cynthia McKinney that you feel are ‘counterproductive politically’ and specifically ‘suggest that the [Libyan] rebels are somehow part of a Zionist conspiracy.’

for those attacking Cynthia, you seem clueless about Libya and about Gadhafi..So FYI:

1. How was Libya doing under the rule of Gadaffi? How bad did the people have it? Were they oppressed as we now commonly accept as fact? Let us look at the facts for a moment.

Before the chaos erupted, Libya had a lower incarceration rate than the Czech republic. It ranked 61st. Libya had the lowest infant mortality rate of all of Africa. Libya had the highest life expectancy of all of Africa. Less than 5% of the population was undernourished. In response to the rising food prices around the world, the government of Libya abolished ALL taxes on food.

People in Libya were rich. Libya had the highest gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita of all of Africa. The government took care to ensure that everyone in the country shared in the wealth. Libya had the highest Human Development Index of any country on the continent. The wealth was distributed equally. In Libya, a lower percentage of people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.

2. On February 16, 2009, Gaddafi took a step further and called on Libyans to back his proposal to dismantle the government and to distribute the oil wealth directly to the 5 million inhabitants of the country.
However, his plan to deliver oil revenues directly to the Libyan people met opposition by senior officials who could lose their jobs due to a parallel plan by Gaddafi to rid the state of corruption.
Some officials, including Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi, Ali Al-Mahmoudi and Farhat Omar Bin Guida, of the Central Bank, told Gaddafi that the measure could harm the country’s economy in the long term due to “capital flight.”
“Do not be afraid to directly redistribute the oil money and create fairer governance structures that respond to people’s interests,” Gaddafi said in a Popular Committee.
The Popular Committees are the backbone of Libya. Through them citizens are represented at the district level.
“The Administration has failed and the state’s economy has failed. Enough is enough. The solution is for the Libyan people to directly receive oil revenues and decide what to do with them,” Gaddafi said in a speech broadcast on state television. To this end, the Libyan leader urged a radical reform of government bureaucracy.
Despite this, senior Libyan government officials voted to delay Gaddafi’s plans. Only 64 ministers from a total of 468 Popular Committee members voted for the measure. There were 251 who saw the measures as positive, but chose to delay their implementation.
Given the rejection of the Committee, Gaddafi affirmed before a public meeting: “My dream during all these years was to give the power and wealth directly to the people.”
etchttp://redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/reason-for-war-gaddafi-wanted-to-nationalise-oil/

‘Another interesting difference was noted in the job-description section of the Sinjar files. Of those Libyan men who listed their intended occupation in Iraq, 85 percent of them listed it as suicide bomber and only 13 percent listed fighter. By way of comparison, only 50 percent of the Saudis listed their occupation as suicide bomber. This indicates that the Libyans tended to be more radical than their Saudi counterparts. Moroccans appeared to be the most radical, with more than 91 percent of them apparently desiring to become suicide bombers’http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110223-jihadist-opportunities-libya

So Gadhafi and the insurgents are not who youve been told they are by the MSM…no susprise

Jack – ‘the NTC will recognise Israel’ –‘not saying this is a bad thing’. You don’t have to say that! To me the fact that the NTC will recognise Israel – I didn’t know that – tells me an awful lot, just as it would tell us a lot if they said they’d recognise a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. And if they were to say this, along with about 140 other countries now, would that have been acceptable to the US and the EU? Israel doesn’t have to be present on the ground to be controlling things anyway – they can manage it all from the FOX studios, and with their wide selection of associates in Saudi Arabia. Indeed it appears that they may have been doing this in Syria, just as they did with the Achille Lauro.
and many thanks Brian for putting some meat on the bones of Qadhafi.

Who runs this site? Ed? Check out the Daily Paul (http://dailypaul.com), they have a very similar format as this site, except users can post content (that appears off the front page). I think it’d draw more involvement from Greens online if we had a similar forum (this site seems to be the best site directed toward green party politics).

as a green party supporter. their support for NATO is outrageous! Are they really supporting a war machine that has killed people in yugoslavia, Afganistan and now Libya?! they may as well dissolve and join Labor or Liberal parties.
=======================
more FYI:
OPEN LETTER TO TWITTER: STOP NATO FROM USING YOUR DOMAIN FOR THEIR KILLINGS IN LIBYA
etc

The press is reporting that NATO has “taken responsibility” for Sunday’s house bombing in Tripoli that killed at least nine people. But in fact, they did no such thing (nor did they, as far as I can tell, even use that word). They did admit that their bombs “probably” hit the house and killed the people (can’t be 100% sure, you know, it could have been some of those stealth Libyan planes). But they insist it was an “accident,” and after all, you’re not really responsible for accidents. However, even if, in this case, this was an “unintended target,” the fact is that these deaths were a statistical certainty. If you have a failure rate of 1 in 1000, and you drop 10000 bombs, 10 of them are going to fall on targets you didn’t intend. It may not be what you intended, but it’s not an “accident.”

Of course, such excuses aren’t really necessary for imperialists. Today, one day later, another 15 civilians were killed by a NATO airstrike (and, once again, despite the fact that journalists actually saw the bodies and the destroyed house, we still have to be told in the headline that this is just an assertion by the “Libyan regime”). And was this another random house hit by “accident”? No, it was hit on purpose, with the usual preposterous claim of it being a “command and control” center (the house belongs to a former military officer, not even a current one!). So NATO not only really takes “responsibility” for this strike, but claims it was part of fulfilling its purported mission. Among the dead? If I sort out the relationships correctly, two of them were great-grandchildren of Muammar Kaddafi. Still more civilians “protected” into the grave.http://lefti.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html#1592061240568812786

@Brian – “did u know the Australian Green party is backing the NATO attack on Libya? ”

I didn’t know that. The site you linked to has a few criticism of the Australian Greens. I think it would be naive to think that any Party would remain true to a philosophy. Especially if Greens are able to gain influence within government, those currently in power will try to co-op or corrupt them.

It isn’t about finding the perfect party or the perfect leader, it’s about moving forward.

@A lot of people on here: The “Two wrong must make a right” fallacy seems to be at work here. For over a century our government has indeed used its military to topple just, democratically elected governments to serve business interests. While I dearly want to see a massive reduction in our global military presence and budget, anyone who sincerely thinks that Gaddafi’s is not that bad or is simply being slandered NATO frankly needs to have their head examined. You can’t count on your fingers and toes all the sinister, despotic things he has done during the 40+ years he has been in power. To name just a few, he has invaded his neighbors, stored away vast amounts of personal wealth in offshore accounts, supported international terrorism, supported other dictators like Idi Amin and Charles Taylor, unsuccessfully tried to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons, suppressed free reporting and has silenced and repressed his own people while jailing and executing dissidences.

Like I said there are several valid arguments to be made for why NATO’s intervention in Libya is unwise or illegal . I would like to give kudos to Lou for bringing up the Glenn Greenwald article. While I sincerely doubt that the only reason we are bombing Libya is their oil (If it was, why haven’t we been bombing Venezuela by now?), but I will concede that it may have been an added bonus in the eyes of the Pentagon in addition to toppling Gaddafi’s and preventing a massacre. Regardless, I am both bewildered and alarmed that one of the Green party’s most visible leaders would actually defend and support such a despicable man with such jaw-droppingly weak and often non-existent evidence.

By the way, if you are going to try to bolster your argument that Gaddafi’s not so bad by sighing the lack of poverty or low incarceration rates inside that country, it might be a good idea not to just regurgitate the official state figures and try to find some independent reporting to verify it. Unfortunately, no independent reporting is actually allowed in Libya, bummer.

Just be clear Lou, we are probably for the most part on the same team. I am sure that aside from this, we would agree on 95% of the issues, so we should be civil.

However, you are simply wrong when you say I didn’t support my claims. If you really want me to point to specific things she said in these interviews I can point to her claim that Libya is a democratic country. Which I suppose is true, if you also consider North Korea and Myanmar democratic. She also praised his “Green book”, which contains his political philosophy he uses to justify his authoritarianism. Moreover when she was on TV she didn’t just say the bombings were wrong because for the standard reasons (That it would ultimately cost more lives then it would save, that there are better uses of our resources, etc.). By appearing on state propaganda, she tacitly admitted that she wanted Gaddafi to stay in power and gave support to the regime. Regardless of what you think of the bombings, there should be no controversy that Gaddafi is, if you will excuse me, a total asshole and that he should be removed from power.

Dude, you are splitting hairs. She praised his implementation of “direct democracy” and his political manifesto. She wasn’t wearing an “I heart Gaddafi” shirt, but it should be abundantly apparent to anyone watching that she approves of his leadership.

And in regards to wasting “our” time, feel free to not respond or even not read at all.

‘ She had an other palm to forehead moment when she actually appeared on Gaddafi’s propaganda network, ‘

Ben needs to not be so paranoid and see every state medias as propaganda…or does he think the ‘free’ press is the only trustworthy source? AS we know from Cynthia and Wayne Madsen, the western ‘free’ press isi n Tripoli and the story they send home bears little resemblance to whats on the ground.
——————–

as for Lou
‘Nobody here, nor is Cynthia McKinney, trying to ‘defend and support such a despicable man.’ You point to articles and videos, yet cite no specific examples of such.’
and bens:
‘
anyone who sincerely thinks that Gaddafi’s is not that bad or is simply being slandered NATO frankly needs to have their head examined. You can’t count on your fingers and toes all the sinister, despotic things he has done during the 40+ years he has been in power’

put asock in it Lou..what do you know of libya or gadaffi? Let me show you what he has done for Libya:

‘How was Libya doing under the rule of Gadaffi? How bad did the people have it? Were they oppressed as we now commonly accept as fact? Let us look at the facts for a moment.

Before the chaos erupted, Libya had a lower incarceration rate than the Czech republic. It ranked 61st. Libya had the lowest infant mortality rate of all of Africa. Libya had the highest life expectancy of all of Africa. Less than 5% of the population was undernourished. In response to the rising food prices around the world, the government of Libya abolished ALL taxes on food.

People in Libya were rich. Libya had the highest gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita of all of Africa. The government took care to ensure that everyone in the country shared in the wealth. Libya had the highest Human Development Index of any country on the continent. The wealth was distributed equally. In Libya, a lower percentage of people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.’http://davidrothscum.blogspot.com/2011/02/world-cheers-as-cia-plunges-libya-into.html

Unlike Lou or ben, Cynthias been to Libya and spoken to the people there…have either of you?

Ben in particular wants to create a green party little different from the other Mainstream parties

as for the continued propaganda line that NATO prevented a massacre: LOL what!

‘False Pretense For War In Libya?

By Alan J. Kuperman

April 14, 2011 “Boston Globe” — EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.

But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.

Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties.

Obama insisted that prospects were grim without intervention. “If we waited one more day, Benghazi . . . could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.’’ Thus, the president concluded, “preventing genocide’’ justified US military action.

But intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents.

Are americans merely clueless or are there more sinister figures haunting this site? the attacks on Cynthia McKinney are really despicable, and there makers seem impervious to analysis or evidence.

‘You’re now changing your tune from McKinney supports Gaddafi to McKinney called Libya a democracy?’

what is a democracy? Its where people decided political decisions..not just where you vote for this or that party to do it for you..THEY have their own agendas often vastly different from those of their voters…eg 2006 midterm elections… democrats won majorities in congress and senate to end the iraq war…once they were back in a majority , they ignored the calls of their electorate..was that democracy?

But I never even took issue with Gaddafi’s economic policies. What I pointed out was that he “has invaded his neighbors, stored away vast amounts of personal wealth in offshore accounts, supported international terrorism, supported other dictators like Idi Amin and Charles Taylor, unsuccessfully tried to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons, suppressed free reporting and has silenced and repressed his own people while jailing and executing dissidences.”

As I’ve also said, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to take unverified government reporting as truth as you did with those statistics you cited the same way baseball doesn’t let the batter call balls and strikes.

I also noticed that you never actually disputed me when I said Libya was a under a dictatorship, you just countered by saying that America isn’t a democracy. How that is in anyway pertinent to this discussion is unclear. While our democracy is VERY imperfect, I would never say that it isn’t in fact a democracy. However, I can’t comprehend why any one would think that the guy who has been the country’s supreme leader since the Nixon admiration is in any way legitimate or democratic.

U.S. Media Imagine Nonexistent Mass Rape in Libya, But are Blind to Mass Murder of Black Africans
Glen Ford

BAR, June 28, 2011

U.S. media show no remorse for falsely reporting that Libyan soldiers were using rape as a weapon of war, although Amnesty International has “not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped.” Yet these same fraudulent journalists are blind to the murder of hundreds of Black Africans – including Libyans – by rebels. A Black neighborhood of Misrata has been emptied by rebels who vow to wipe a nearby Black town off the face of the earth.

‘However, this is entirely the result of the nations vast oil wealth, not competent governance’

really? id call it competent governance, as do the millions of Libyans who support Gadaffi. Thats why they support him…the alternative is a fundamenalist senusi islamic caliphate complete with sharia law and zero black libyans(see above), or a TNC market fundamentalist neoliberal dictatiorship with again zero black libyans…

2.
‘What I pointed out was that he “has invaded his neighbors, stored away vast amounts of personal wealth in offshore accounts, supported international terrorism, supported other dictators like Idi Amin and Charles Taylor, unsuccessfully tried to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons, suppressed free reporting and has silenced and repressed his own people while jailing and executing dissidences.”

starting with the last first: by dissidents you mean the LIFG(Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) and NFSL:
The former claim as their occupation: ‘suicide bomber’ (nice!)

For a man you claim to have stored away vast amounts of wealth, he shows little in the way of conspicuous consumption! If you were him, youd be livnig in a huge mansion with hordes of cadillacs or whatever takes your fancy! But Gadafi..all he has is that goddamn tent!

Suppors international terrorism… you dont need to tell me…is well known he supported that notorious terrorist Nelson Mandela, the man the sweet democracy loving USA betrayed to years inprison…He also supported the IRA (imperial UK just loved that!) and black liberation (earning the undying hate of every white supremicist from NY to Baton Riouge)

‘As I’ve also said, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to take unverified government reporting as truth as you did with those statistics you cited the same way baseball doesn’t let the batter call balls and strikes’

government reporting??? you mean the NYT Fox, WAPO you name it …tells the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth?!

‘U.S. media show no remorse for falsely reporting that Libyan soldiers were using rape as a weapon of war, although Amnesty International has “not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped.” Yet these same fraudulent journalists are blind to the murder of hundreds of Black Africans – including Libyans – by rebels. A Black neighborhood of Misrata has been emptied by rebels who vow to wipe a nearby Black town off the face of the earth.’http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m79062&hd=&size=1&l=e

‘I also noticed that you never actually disputed me when I said Libya was a under a dictatorship,’

you must have missed this:

On February 16, 2009, Gaddafi took a step further and called on Libyans to back his proposal to dismantle the government and to distribute the oil wealth directly to the 5 million inhabitants of the country.
However, his plan to deliver oil revenues directly to the Libyan people met opposition by senior officials who could lose their jobs due to a parallel plan by Gaddafi to rid the state of corruption.
Some officials, including Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi, Ali Al-Mahmoudi and Farhat Omar Bin Guida, of the Central Bank, told Gaddafi that the measure could harm the country’s economy in the long term due to “capital flight.”
“Do not be afraid to directly redistribute the oil money and create fairer governance structures that respond to people’s interests,” Gaddafi said in a Popular Committee.
The Popular Committees are the backbone of Libya. Through them citizens are represented at the district level.
“The Administration has failed and the state’s economy has failed. Enough is enough. The solution is for the Libyan people to directly receive oil revenues and decide what to do with them,” Gaddafi said in a speech broadcast on state television. To this end, the Libyan leader urged a radical reform of government bureaucracy.
Despite this, senior Libyan government officials voted to delay Gaddafi’s plans. Only 64 ministers from a total of 468 Popular Committee members voted for the measure. There were 251 who saw the measures as positive, but chose to delay their implementation.
Given the rejection of the Committee, Gaddafi affirmed before a public meeting: “My dream during all these years was to give the power and wealth directly to the people.”
etchttp://redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/reason-for-war-gaddafi-wanted-to-nationalise-oil/

a real dictator would have had those dissenting ministers hung by the balls..and gone ahead and distributed the wealth to the people!